


the secret society for people who've cheated death

by cloudcompany



Category: CrankGameplays - Fandom, Unus Annus - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Allergies, Alternate Universe, Brownie Baking, Crankiplier if you really squint I guess, Hurt!Ethan, Hurt/Comfort, Mortality, Near Death Experiences, That just means they aren't YouTubers in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24519142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudcompany/pseuds/cloudcompany
Summary: Still, there are those times where he’ll get a mystery pain somewhere in his body or he’ll get sick out of nowhere and his thoughts immediately turn to things like ‘will this pass eventually on its own?’ and then sometimes, ‘is this it? is this the one that kills me?’Then when he’s fine a few hours or days later, he just shrugs it off and thinks nothing more of it. His mortality doesn’t really bother him anymore.Then Ethan comes along.or, the boys are no stranger to death or facing down their own mortality; they should start a club.
Relationships: Mark Fischbach/Ethan Nestor
Comments: 7
Kudos: 144





	the secret society for people who've cheated death

**Author's Note:**

> alternatively titled 'the secret society for people who've fucked death over'
> 
> please be warned: there's a description of someone going into pretty severe anaphylactic shock in this fic, so if you are bothered by this, maybe don't read this one.

the secret society for people who’ve cheated death

Back when Mark was around twenty, he’d nearly died.

His appendix had been dangerously close to bursting, he had a tumor the size of a fist that needed removing from his adrenal gland, and then to make matters worse, a while later, a scar in his intestines tore itself in two and caused a blockage that had taken another surgery to fix. He’d had a really bad allergic to alcohol that had landed him in the hospital again and resulted in his inability to drink it at all. There was also that time with the heart attack, but he doesn’t really remember it all that well to be honest.

He jokes about it sometimes, the time his body decided that it didn’t want to work anymore and every organ ever decided to just quit on him like they’d formed a union. So Mark’s not exactly a stranger to death and has had to come to terms with his own mortality more than once. Hospitals still make him a little uncomfortable and the thought of anything going inside him – needles, tubes, anything – freaks him out more than he’d like to admit. All of those instances had been scary, sure, but he’d never quite been on the brink of death so suddenly that he hadn’t had time to prepare. His surgeries hadn’t been sprung on him too suddenly and he’d always been fairly confident that he would be fine after. He was of the mindset that whatever happened, happened.

Still, there are those times where he’ll get a mystery pain somewhere in his body or he’ll get sick out of nowhere and his thoughts immediately turn to things like ‘ _will this pass eventually on its own?_ ’ and then sometimes, ‘ _is this it? is this the one that kills me?_ ’

Then when he’s fine a few hours or days later, he just shrugs it off and thinks nothing more of it. His mortality doesn’t really bother him.

Then Ethan comes along.

Mark’s not quite sure what to make of Ethan at first. He’s excitable and twitchy and can’t keep his mind on one coherent train of thought for more than a few minutes. He’s kind of awkward and has some major self-esteem issues, not to mention he can be kind of clumsy, which is baffling considering he’s supposed to have been an ex-gymnast. But he’s also endearing and sweet and funny. He’s a thoughtful guy who wants to so badly to help other people that he puts them before himself, which in turn comes dangerously close to being self-neglect. He can be tactile, which for Mark, who doesn’t really like to be touched at all, can be annoying sometimes. When he gets bored, it’s always an adventure because he’s one of the most out-of-left-field and creative people Mark knows. He looks at Mark like he trusts him wholeheartedly, like he knows Mark would never actually hurt him, no matter how much of a handful he could be.

They’ve known each other a total of four years when Mark nearly kills him.

* * *

Ethan likes cooking, which is something he shares in common with Mark. He’s been over so many times that he knows exactly where everything is in Mark’s kitchen and vice versa. He knows what Mark does and doesn’t like in terms of food, how he likes certain dishes and has even learned how to make some of his favorite meals. Mark’s taught him how to make his mom’s chicken n’dumplings and how to make omelets – which was quite a learning experience actually, because Mark had had the _brilliant_ idea of letting Ethan learn how to make one by blindfolding himself and letting Ethan guide him through the steps like an outtake from _Ratatouille_ – and they’d even tried their hand at ramen a few times since Ethan was really fond of it. Cooking is a regular thing with them, so it’s not really surprising whenever Ethan brings up making something.

“It’s a cake kind of day,” he says offhandedly. Mark glances over at him from his phone. Ethan’s fiddling with his Rubix cube and making swift progress on it, a sure sign that he’s bored. He’s slouched on Mark’s couch, legs stretched out in front of him, hood pulled up on his head, mouth slightly open. His eyes look like they might fully glaze over any second now.

“I got brownie mix,” says Mark, thinking back to the box in his pantry.

Ethan hums. Mark thinks he might insist on cake, which will lead to an argument on what kind to bake and if they really want to make it from scratch or if they’re just lazy enough to use mix from the store, which, if they _are_ going to be lazy, will prompt a journey to the supermarket for cake mix, which will defeat the purpose of being lazy in the first place.

But Ethan shrugs and looks over at Mark with a big grin on his face. “Sure. I want to lick the spoon though.”

“You are five years old, I swear,” says Mark. He gets up from the armchair. “You could get sick.”

“I don’t care about salmonella,” says Ethan, deliberately pronouncing it ‘Sal and Ella’, “whoever they are. I still want to lick the spoon.”

Mark laughs in spite of himself. He’d always been a sucker for cheesy jokes and Ethan was chock full of them, as was his wont. The kind of brownie mix that Mark usually buys is very specific. Because Ethan’s over so often, it’s become common practice for Mark to buy ingredients that don’t have peanuts in them or were made in a non-peanut facility. And even when Mark does have peanut-related foods, he keeps them as far from the non-peanut stuff as possible, so that he doesn’t accidently trigger Ethan’s incredibly sensitive peanut allergy. As such, the brand of brownie mix that Mark buys makes their mix in a non-peanut facility.

Mark finds cooking extremely therapeutic. He likes getting lost in the rhythm of stirring and chopping, smelling the individual ingredients and what they become when mixed together. He likes the feeling of pride at having created something with his own two hands, which was part of why he liked civil engineering and carpentering and the building aspect that went hand and hand with them. Somehow, Ethan’s talked him into making fudge icing for their brownies.

“Can I trust you to make these brownies and not fuck up?” he asks Ethan only partly joking. Partly, because once, Ethan added salt instead of sugar to the entire batch of cookies they made and ruined the whole thing. The time before that, he’d added white wine instead of olive oil to the poached salmon – they were attempting to be fancy adults with this dish – and nearly set fire to the skillet and stove.

“It’s _brownie mix_ ,” says Ethan, mock-defensive. “All I have to do is add eggs and water.”

“Knowing you, you’ll find some way to irreversibly fuck it up. Make sure its actually water and not vinegar or something,” says Mark over his shoulder as he turns away to start the fudge icing recipe.

“I’m gonna eat all these brownies without you if you keep making fun of me,” says Ethan. Mark can hear him cracking the eggs along the edge of the mixing bowl, swearing softly at his not-quite clean breaks. “Also, I wanna lick the icing spoon when you’re done with it.”

“You will not. Maybe _I_ want to lick the icing spoon.”

Ethan mocks him under his breath like he always does, then swears again as he – judging by the sloshing sounds Mark picks up – overpours the water into the bowl.

“Fuck, I got some on my hoodie,” mutters Ethan. “S’my favorite hoodie.”

“Jesus Christ, will you please focus for one second,” Mark says, voice curling in laughter at the edges. “It’s like cooking with a toddler.”

Ethan starts mixing; Mark can hear the spoon scraping the bottom of the bowl as he stirs. “ _You_ focus on the icing,” says Ethan, “I’ll focus on the brownies.” He goes quiet for a moment, as if focusing very hard on stirring now.

“These are gonna be the most bomb brownies,” he chirps a few moments later.

“If they are, it’s not because of anything you did,” says Mark. “They’re made of store-bought mix.”

Its silent on Ethan’s end, save for a quiet tune being hummed softly under his breath. Mark’s following the recipe on his phone, muttering the steps to himself out loud. He pours in the vanilla and milk, stirring the batter vigorously. The humming has stopped. Mark barely picks the absence of noise out over the sounds of his spoon whisking through the icing batter. Maybe they should put on some music. It might be fun to make brownies to the dulcet tones of screeching death metal, but Ethan had been dead set on licking both of the batter spoons and adding raging guitars and drums that rivalled a hummingbird heartbeat to the inevitable sugar rush that would occur was probably not a good idea.

“Hey, did you remember to preheat the oven?” Mark asks, measuring out the confectioner’s sugar.

Ethan makes a sound, like a grunt of confirmation.

Mark dumps the confectioner’s sugar into the bowl. He’s got some Ed Sheeran in his playlist. Maybe that would be better; nice and calming. It would fit the idea of cooking being therapeutic.

Ethan coughs behind him. Mark makes a face.

“Jesus, don’t cough all over the brownie stuff, dude,” he says. He expects some snarky remark from Ethan or maybe an apology, but nothing comes between the coughing bout, which has grown in volume and force. Almost like he’s choking.

Mark turns. Ethan is doubled over against the edge of the counter, having a hacking fit. The skin of his hands is blotchy and red, the rest of his face hidden by his hood that’s still pulled up over his head. The spoon lies half-licked and forgotten on the linoleum. Then the wheezing starts.

Mark is over in a heartbeat. He calls Ethan’s name, voice steadily rising in pitch and volume. Ethan stumbles, his coughing making his whole body shudder under Mark’s hands as he helps him to the floor. His hands around his throat, clawing at the reddening skin, trying so, _so_ hard to breathe.

“Fuck,” Mark says, voice tight in a hiss. “ _Fuck_.”

He needs to do something. He tries to rally his thoughts. Ethan doesn’t have much time and he can’t afford to freak out now. He’s never had to help him through something like this - what is clearly anaphylactic shock - and he’d hoped he’d never have to. But he knows what to do.

With Ethan on the floor, Mark lifts his legs, keeping them elevated with one of the stockpots he yanks out of one of the cabinets. It’s a temporary fix, so he needs to hurry.

_Help the patient into a comfortable position and keep their legs elevated. This keeps the blood flowing to their vital organs._

Mark tries not to panic, glancing around for Ethan’s backpack. He always has one when he comes over, full of the Ethan essentials: laptop, phone charger, wallet, Rubix cube.

EpiPen.

The coughing has stopped, the wheezes are coming fewer and farther between now.

Mark bolts, almost slipping in the process. Ethan’s backpack is in the living room, right? He’d dropped it by the couch when he’d come over. Yeah, because he had it right next to him when he’d reached into the front pocket and grabbed the Rubix cube that he’d been playing with earlier. Mark dashes into the living room, rounds the couch, yanks open the main zipper on the backpack and rifles through the compartment.

God, he’s so scared. He can barely stop his hands from shaking so that he can grab the EpiPen when he finally finds it. His fingers fumble with it and he growls loud and angry, beyond frustrated. Fuck, Ethan’s going to _suffocate to death in his goddamn kitchen_ if he can’t get it together and-

Mark banishes that thought immediately. He grabs the EpiPen finally, and races back to the kitchen. Ethan’s feet have stopped scrabbling on the hardwood and his body is making these little convulsing motions, soft like the hiccups but marginally more terrifying because of what that means for Ethan.

“Fuck, fuck, no, no, no,” begs Mark, barreling back into the kitchen. “Hang on, hang on, just a second, _fuck_.”

He tears the cap off the EpiPen and for a precious second his mind completely fucking blanks. Where is he supposed to stick the needle?

_Upper thigh! Upper thigh, for fuck’s sake!_

Mark jams the needle into Ethan’s thigh with probably more force than necessary – it will leave a killer bruise later, but at the moment, Mark’s more focused on his making sure his friend’s not dying – and grabs Ethan’s shoulder like it might ground him and keep him from flipping out entirely.

“Ethan,” he says, voice pleading. Nothing happens. Something should have happened, right? Ethan’s deathly quiet. Mark’s blood runs ice cold.

 _“Ethan!”_ He can’t stop it; the name is scared out of him, rocketing out of his mouth in a mix of raw fear, and a block of ice drops into his chest.

Then Ethan breathes in, loud and sudden, body shivering with the amount of effort it takes to gulp in enough air. He’s panting like he’s run a marathon, eyes screwed shut as he hauls in breath after breath, and Mark nearly collapses boneless next to him right then and there, panting for breath himself. They huddle there for a while, Mark still gripping Ethan’s shoulder like a lifeline.

Ethan’s breaths are still coming in tight wisps, but he’s having an easier time getting air into his lungs, hands relaxing around his throat. For a long moment, Mark just watches him breathe, scared that if he takes his eyes off of him, he’ll go quiet and still again. But he has things he needs to do. He gets shakily to his feet and grabs his phone off the counter by the stove, calls an ambulance and deposits himself right back by Ethan’s side while the operator walks him through the steps to make sure he’s okay until the paramedics arrive.

* * *

Ethan has had allergic reactions before.

He’d had one as a kid that wasn’t _that_ severe, and he’d had his epinephrine on hand anyway, so it wasn’t that bad an experience. That had been after eating, like, one-sixtieth of a peanut. An incredibly miniscule amount of peanut. Like, microscopic levels of peanut.

The brownie batter he ate was made with two percent peanut oil.

Ethan can’t believe it. _Two goddamn percent_.

“How am I not actually dead right now?” he mutters at the ceiling. He glances at the IV drip standing next to him, continuously feeding epinephrine into his veins. He squirms on the hospital bed a little; his thigh is stinging under the fabric of his jeans, no doubt where the EpiPen made contact.

“I am _so_ fucking sorry,” says Mark for maybe the tenth time. He’s sitting by Ethan’s bed looking like he’s been through the wringer, which is kind of funny considering Ethan was the one who’d gone into shock.

And stopped breathing.

Okay, so, not that funny really.

“I told you, it’s fine,” says Ethan, again, for the tenth time. “That brand of brownie mix usually makes their stuff without peanut oil. It’s fine.”

“I should have checked,” says Mark. He runs his hands over his face and laces his hands on top of his head, as if he’s trying to force himself into the chair and into the ground.

As it turned out, their regular brownie mix brand had switched recipes and added peanut oil to their list of ingredients in some shitty bid to be ‘healthier’ or whatever. Fucking idiots had nearly killed someone with that bullshit.

“We should totally sue them,” says Ethan lightly, voice a little stronger now that the effects of the allergy are being taken care of. When the paramedics had arrived at Mark’s house and were asking Ethan questions, his voice had been shaky and strained, breathy and weak as a spring breeze. That had scared Mark too, almost as much as the actual ordeal: the death rattle that had clung to Ethan’s voice like an ugly reminder of what had very nearly happened.

“I bet we could,” says Mark darkly. “Can’t believe they didn’t even think to advertise that they’d changed the fucking recipe.”

Ethan hums and rubs at the spot on his thigh where the EpiPen hit him. Feels like there’s going to be a bruise later. He wonders how hard Mark had to stick him to leave a bruise like that. He must have been panicking.

“Hey,” says Ethan gently. Mark lifts his head tiredly, looking beyond exhausted. “You okay?”

Mark blinks like he hadn’t been expecting that. “Are you serious? You nearly died; I’m the one who should be asking _you_ that.”

“Yeah, but you were _there_ ,” Ethan says. “You had to watch the whole thing. That had to be scary.”

Mark blinks again and then looks back down at his hands laced together between his knees. “I mean…yeah. I was terrified. I thought you were going to up and suffocate right there. And then you just stopped breathing and I…” Mark trails off, running his hand through his hair.

Ethan watches him. “Mark,” he says. “I can hear you beating yourself up over there. You did good today. Better than good. I mean, you saved my life! Can you imagine what would have happened if you had freaked out and forgot to give me the EpiPen?”

“I don’t want to imagine it,” says Mark firmly.

That’s fair.

“Well, look. I’m still here. I’m okay.” Ethan shrugs. “We can’t change what happened. We’ll just have to be more careful in the future, right?”

Mark shakes his head. “I don’t understand how you can be so okay with this.”

“I mean, Ethan shrugs again, rubbing the back of his neck, “don’t get me wrong; that was intense. I was so scared when it first started. But what happened, happened. I can’t change that. Thinking about it over and over again isn’t going to change anything either. I’m just glad you were there.”

He taps Mark’s knee with his foot. “Didn’t you have a couple of brushes with death before? You’ve told me a while ago that you weren’t worried about what happened then. It’s kind of like that for me too. I’m not really worried about what happened. Sure, I might be a little iffier about brownie mixes now, but at the end of the day, I’m okay. I survived. It’s cool.”

Mark shakes his head, a weary bark of laughter rising from him. “So, what; we’re comparing near death experiences like two old war veterans showing off their scars?”

“Think of it like a bonding moment,” says Ethan helpfully. “Over our mutual fake-outs.”

“Our ability to fuck death over brings us closer,” Mark hums dryly. “Poetic.”

“Well now we’re kind of like a club,” says Ethan. “The club for people who’ve almost died once. We should have a special handshake and everything.”

Mark looks up at him and for the first time since the episode in the kitchen, he looks a little more like his old self. The small smile he gives Ethan is tired but fond. To think, he never would have heard another quip like this from Ethan again if he hadn’t acted as quickly as he had. “A handshake, huh? That’s more like something a secret society would do.”

“Ooh, even better! I like it. Super mysterious.”

Ethan babbles on a little longer, chattering about matching jackets and spooky tattoos, and Mark listens and listens, hanging on every word.

**Author's Note:**

> hi, i'm cloud (or vee)!  
> i have never watched a crankgameplays video in my life! everything i know about ethan was what i learned from watching unus annus videos for three days, so i hope he feels in-character. i'm not an ethan nestor expert, but i do know that he actually did have an allergic reaction where he stopped breathing, so that part's accurate at least.  
> you can find me on tumblr at veedoesthings.tumblr.com


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